On Missions Sunday, Pope appeals for respect for indigenous

The appeal on the day of the canonisation of St Joseph Allamano, founder of the Consolata missionaries also present in Asia. he is attributed with having healed a boy from the Yanomami people, seriously injured by a jaguar in the Amazon. ‘We support with our prayers and our help those who bring the luminous proclamation of the Gospel to every part of the earth’.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - ‘The civil political authorities must ensure that indigenous peoples are protected of their fundamental rights, against all forms of exploitation of their dignity and of their territories,’ appealed Pope Francis at the Angelus today following Mass - on World Missionas Sunday - for the canonization of 14 new saints.

The cue for this appeal came from one of these saints, the Italian priest Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata missionaries and missionaries, who also carry out their ministry in a number of countries in Asia including Mongolia, Kazakhstan, South Korea and Taiwan. Allamano's concern for the ‘most fragile and vulnerable populations’ is also evidenced by the fact that the very miracle that led to his canonisation took place among the Yanomani, one of the peoples living in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and often cited for its difficult struggle for survival against the economic interests that aim at intensive exploitation of the forest.

In fact, the intercession of St Joseph Allamano was credited with the prodigious healing of a boy who had been very seriously injured by a jaguar attack.

Together with the Turin priest, Pope Francis today also proclaimed saints the martyrs of Damascus - eight Franciscan Friars Minor and the three Maronite brothers Massabki, killed in hatred of the faith in Syria in 1860 -, Sister Elena Guerra, foundress of the congregation of the Oblate Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Sister Marie-Léonie Paradis, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family.

‘These new saints lived the style of Jesus: service. The faith and apostolate they carried out did not nourish in them worldly desires and cravings for power but, on the contrary, they made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing good, steadfast in difficulties, generous to the end,’ Francis said of them during the canonisation homily.

At the end of the rite, before the Angelus prayer, the Pope also addressed a thought to all missionaries. The theme chosen for this year's Day - Go and invite all to the banquet (Mt 22:9) - ‘reminds us,’ said the pontiff, ‘that the missionary proclamation is to bring to all the invitation to a festive encounter with the Lord who loves us and who wants us to share in his spousal joy. As the new saints teach us, every Christian is called to participate in this mission with his or her evangelical witness in every environment’. ‘Let us support with our prayers and our help,’ Francis went on to say, ’all the missionaries who often with great sacrifice bring the luminous proclamation of the Gospel to every part of the earth.

Finally, the Pope also renewed the invitation today to continue ‘to pray for the populations that suffer because of war, the martyred Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, the martyred Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and we invoke for all the gift of peace’. ‘May the Virgin Mary,’ he concluded, ’help us to be like the saints who are courageous and joyful witnesses of the Gospel.